112 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



Darwin, on the other hand, there is indeed cunning, 

 effort, and consequent use and disuse; nor does he deny 

 that these have produced some, and sometimes even an 

 important, effect in modifyiag species, but he assigns 

 by far the most important role in the whole scheme 

 to natural selection, which, as I have already shown, 

 must, with him, be regarded as a synonym for luck 

 pure and simple. This, for reasons well shown by Mr. 

 Spencer in the articles under consideration, is so un- 

 tenable that it seems only possible to account for its 

 having been advanced at all by supposing Mr. Darwin's 

 judgment to have been perverted by some one or more 

 of the many causes that might tend to warp them. 

 What the chief of those causes may have been I 

 shall presently point out. 



Buffon erred rather on the side of ignoring function- 

 ally produced modifications than of insisting on them. 

 The main agency with him is the direct action of the 

 environment upon the organism. This, no doubt, is 

 a flaw in Buffon's immortal work, but it is one which 

 Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck easily corrected; nor 

 can we doubt that Buffon would have readily accepted 

 their amendment if it had been suggested to him. 

 Buffon did infinitely more in the way of discovering 

 and establishing the theory of descent with modifica- 

 tion than any one has ever done either before or since. 

 He was too much occupied with proving the fact of 

 evolution at all, to dweU as fully as might have been 

 wished upon the details of the process whereby the 

 amceba had become man, but we have already seen 

 that he regarded inherited mutilation as the cause of 



